Old hollywood lgbt
When Hollywood Studios Married Off Gay Stars to Keep Their Sexuality a Secret
Valentino also married costume designer Natacha Rambova in , at a time when his career was starting to get off and the roles he played were seen as less typically masculine, such as in the film “Monsieur Beaucaire” in His marriage to Rambova ended in , which left some speculating that the marriages of the “pink powder puff” (a nickname Valentino acquired after playing effeminate roles on screen) were coverups to keep the sex symbol’s reputation intact.
Identifying how many Hollywood couples tied the knot to cloak their sexuality is, of course problematic since it’s primarily based on speculation_._
“I think the hardest thing for a historian is to kind of sift through what the rumor [is] and what is actually factual," says Tropiano.
One commonly cited source for speculation is the memoir of Scotty Bowers, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Private Sex Lives of the Stars. Bowers’ account details sexual encounters, gay and straight, that he claims he both arranged and took pa
Before the word “gay” took roots in our daily life – and before we began to see movies featuring women, men and all variations of the word “gender” in all kinds of styles – the powerful engine of the industry of visual entertainment was often driven by filmmakers who, even at the dawn of Hollywood, were themselves gay. The word was mentioned rarely and only in confidential, but the entertainment machine was constantly affected by bright and daring gay filmmakers, creating slap pictures and start significant conversations between the story on the screen and the audience in the dark.
From the s to the early years of the 60s, Hollywood had filmmakers capable of enthralling, entertaining and sometimes scaring the audience. Many of the top directors were LBGTQ+. Many actors and adj people behind the scenes were adequately known by the studios and its bosses to be gay – but as long as their private life was kept silent, their work was more than welcomed.
Among these filmmakers, many were European by birth, working in Hollywood and feeling themselves more at home there than in Europe.
5. Stars from a Bi-Gone Era
Most of the stories that we discussed came from one guy: Scotty Bowers, a Hollywood pimp of the queer silver screen actors of the s and beyond. He was also associated with Alfred Kinsey in his famous research of human sexuality in the s by providing many of the interview subjects.
A former marine, Bowers kept peaceful for many years about these stories, as he did not want to adversely affect the lives of any of the actors who were still around. Many of the stories were actively hushed up using fixers paid by the studios at the hour, and several of the actors were in "lavender marriages"marriages arranged by the studio, frequently with another queer actor. At the age, studios especially would not have wanted the queer attractions of their headlining actors to be widely known, as that would own damaged the 'wholesome family image' of many of the films they wanted to market.
After all of the actors died, Bowers finally decided that his experiences and stories couldn't harm their image or beloved statusplus the world was a more open place to queer attracti
Old Hollywood Stars You Didn't Know Were Gay
Let's state the obvious: Being a gay celebrity during the days of Old Hollywood was no stroll in the park. Behind Tinseltown's glitzy facade loomed the specter of Hollywood's "sexual gestapo," a term coined by Matt Tyrnauer, director of the documentary Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood (via NPR). "It was very difficult," he said, "for people to have authentic lives." And Tyrnauer should know: His film profiled L.A. personality Scotty Bowers, who reportedly acted as a "confidante, noun, and pimp for Hollywood's closeted movie stars."
The threat of exposure was concrete and ever-present for these entertainers. Per Tyrnauer, studio contracts contained so-called "moral clauses" that could instantly vaporize a lucrative career. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Police Department's vice squad were all too willing to bust celebrities, often working in cahoots with the urge in their quest to hobble reputations.
Definitively name-checking these stars is impossible, as they were all in the closet through